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Faction Shields Enhanced

Tired of not having enough shirt selections for your warriors?
Now you can wear shield + shirt combinations! And they come in both offensive and defensive varieties!

This mod is a recreation of the Faction Shields mod. Full credit for the meshes, textures, and concepts of these shields goes to Acord who is the creator of Faction Shields. Acord has given previous permission to use their assets. If Acord has changed their policies, I'm more than happy to take my mod off Steam.
"Acord: All my mods are open for the community, you are free to use and have fun with it."
Here is the original upload: (Note: You do NOT need Faction Shields to use Faction Shields Enhanced. Faction Shields Enhanced is 100% standalone. I simply used the meshes from Faction Shields to build my mod.)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1838403340

My mod features five new items that are Shirt + Shield combinations. Since shirts are textures applied directly to the skin, you can still have a mesh attached to them, which results in being able to wear a Shirt + Shield combination. In vanilla Kenshi, there are very few truly good shirt options (Leather Turtleneck and Darkened Chain being really the only two best-in-slot), so adding in shields as shirt items made sense to me to help expand the viable options for late-game shirts.

The stats for these new items are below: (Note: These stats are estimated for Masterwork quality, so you may see slightly different values when encountering these shields for the first time. This is because Kenshi scales some stats with quality, such as Stealth.)

[OKRAN HOLY AEGIS + LEATHER VEST]
Coverage: Chest - 90%, Left Arm - 90%, Stomach - 100%
-Stealth 0.71x
-Crossbows 0.7x
-Dodge 0.9x
-Assassination 0.7x
-Martial arts -4
-Melee Attack -4
-Melee Defense +10

[SHEK SHIELD + MARTIAL ARTS BINDINGS]
Coverage: Chest 65%, Stomach - 65%, Left Arm - 100%, Right Arm - 25%, Left Leg - 15%, Right Leg - 15%
-Stealth 0.71x
-Crossbows 0.7x
-Assassination 0.7x
-Martial Arts +4
-Fist Protection 100%
-Melee Attack +4
-Melee Defense +8

[SHINOBI BRACER + BLACKENED CHAIN SHIRT]
Coverage: Chest - 100%, Stomach - 100%, Left Arm - 80%, Right Arm - 30%
-Crossbows: 0.8x
-Dodge: 0.9x
-Assassination 1.15x
-Martial Arts +4
-Fist Protection 50%
-Melee Attack +2

[SHINOBI BRACER + BLACKENED HIVER CHAIN]
Coverage: Chest - 100%, Left Arm - 50%
-Stealth 1.15x
-Assassination 1.15x
-Martial Arts +6
-Fist Protection 50%
-Melee Attack +4

[UNITED CITIES CREST + LEATHER SHIRT]
Coverage: Chest - 100%, Stomach - 100%, Left Arm - 100%, Right Arm - 30%
-Stealth 0.71x
-Crossbows 0.7x
-Dodge 0.9x
-Assassination 0.7x
-Martial arts -4
-Melee Attack -4
-Melee Defense +8

[ALL SHIELDS]
-Defense values are similar to the defense given by Blackened Chainmail with slightly altered values to solve Kenshi's cut efficiency issue.

These defense values are based off of Cut Efficiency Rebalanced. Even though No Cut Efficiency is the more popular mod for Kenshi that fixes this issue, I personally prefer the thought process behind Cut Efficiency Rebalanced. The links to both mods are featured below: (Note: You do NOT need either mod to use Faction Shield Enhanced. Faction Shields Enhanced is 100% standalone. I simply used the same stats from Cut Efficiency Rebalanced)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1805638933 (No Cut Efficiency)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2350372941 (Cut Efficiency Rebalanced)

You can find these new items being worn by gate guards of the respective faction. For example, Shinobi guards at Mongrel's gates will be wielding Shinobi Bracer + Blackened Chain Shirt. The shields are NOT sold by any vendors, however the blueprints are, and can be found in stores that make sense for that specific faction. This means you'll have to craft your own if you want the highest quality version of these shields. Since the shields are meant as an alternative to best-in-slot shirts, I tried to make them not so easy to acquire.

Once the blueprints are acquired, you can craft them at the following stations:
-Okran Holy Aegis + Leather Vest--Heavy Armour Smithy-
-Shek Shield + Martial Arts Bindigs--Leather Armour Bench-
-Shinobi Bracer + Blackened Chain Shirt--Chain Armour Crafting Bench-
-Shinobi Bracer + Blackened Hiver Chain--Chain Armour Crafting Bench-
-United Cities Crest + Leather Shirt--Heavy Armour Smithy-

This mod can be kept fairly high in load order as long as you don't have any other mods directly editing gate guard equipment. Even if you are using gate guard mods, my mod ADDS the shields as a clothing option, so it's possible the shields will still be equipped, just not at 100% frequency. For your own squad, you can always rely on buying the blueprints from vendors. Since these changes are additions and the shields themselves are completely new items, they should still show up in most cases.

P.S. I like the ideas of shields in Kenshi, but since they aren't implemented into the gameplay naturally, there are only a few solutions. Some mods add them as a belt slot item, or as weapons. Others add shields as armor/armour that are placed in the weapon slot (this is super buggy sadly), but I was inspired by the mod "Shields of Kenshi" by paperkut808. Shields of Kenshi makes a lot of changes I'm not crazy about, but the idea of attaching shields to shirts is quite genius. You can find Shields of Kenshi at the link below:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2351758227

If you enjoy my mod, feel free to hit that 👍
Positive ratings let me know I'm doing a good job! 😊
I appreciate all feedback, so please leave a comment! I read every single one of them!

I'm also working on updating all my old mods, so I'd love it if you checked them out. They're featured on my workshop page:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/2PercentNate/myworkshopfiles/?appid=233860

Permissions & Use
Feel free to translate, edit, chop up, deep fry, or otherwise modify my mods to your heart’s content. All of my mods are freely distributed. If you end up editing one, I’d really appreciate receiving credit with a link to the original mod. It’s not required, but it would make my day! 😊